CHEMICAL WEAPONS? REALLY?

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With concern over the Syrian regime's chemical weapons stockpile reaching a fever pitch, international experts are cautioning against alarmism, saying there's no confirmation that the Syrians are mixing weapons components or loading them into delivery systems, as some U.S. news organizations have reported.

Experts in the United States and Europe who monitor unconventional weapons said President Bashar Assad's embattled regime certainly has moved parts of his nation's vast, acknowledged chemical arsenal. But that movement could be interpreted as reassuring rather than alarming, the experts said, if the intention is to keep the weapons from extremists in the anti-Assad movement who are at the forefront of recent rebel advances.

WHAT CAUSES EXPERTS TO DOUBT SYRIA WILL DEPLOY CHEMICAL WEAPONS?

Syria has denied that it plans to deploy chemical weapons, likening such a move to “suicide” because of U.S.-led warnings that doing so would invite Western intervention in the nearly 2-year-old conflict.

“I'm skeptical about sarin being prepared or artillery shells being filled. I've just seen too much in the past with satellite photography making assumptions about chemical weapons, most infamously in Iraq,” said Greg Thielmann, a senior fellow at the Arms Control Association in Washington and an early skeptic of U.S. claims that Iraq had built up a chemical weapons arsenal prior to the 2003 U.S. invasion. At the time, Thielmann was acting director for the State Department office responsible for analyzing the Iraqi weapons threat. No such weapons were found once the U.S. military vanquished Iraqi forces.

Unlike the debate over whether or not Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, there's no dispute that Syria has amassed a chemical arsenal. Assad admitted as long ago as January 2009 that his government had chemical weapons. Even before then, those who studied the issue had believed for years that Syria had a strategic capacity – including VX, mustard and sarin gases – which the regime billed as a counter to Israel's alleged nuclear arsenal.

But many who study the topic worry that the hysteria has gone well beyond what the facts warrant, and there are concerns that the intelligence hasn't really shown much change in recent months.

WHY IS THERE SUCH GROWING CONCERN OVER THE USE OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS?

Jean Pascal Zanders, a senior research fellow at the European Union Institute for Security Studies and a leading expert on chemical weapons, wrote in an email from Brussels that he has “concern that the Syrian chemical weapons threat is being ratcheted up to justify military intervention.” He said that for the current news reports to make sense, Syria's chemical weapons capability would have to be as crude as, or cruder than, Iraq's in the 1990s, when, he said, the Iraqi mixing process consisted of “Jeeps with bomb trailers driving around the airfield to mix the two final precursors.” He noted that Iraq did not mix its chemicals in advance.

One top international chemical weapons official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he's involved in diplomacy on the issue, said he feared that news reports on the disposition of Syria's chemical weapons are based on a few pieces of reliable information that have been repeated again and again, amplifying the threat each time.

So far, the official said, evidence suggests that the Syrian regime is storing sarin gas in “binary form,” meaning the components are being kept separately and therefore safely. If credible evidence surfaces that shows the regime mixing components, “that's an entirely different story.” The official said that would be hard to envision. WHAT ARE THE TACTICAL ISSUES SURROUNDING USE OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS IN A CIVIL WAR?

With battle lines fluid and supporters and enemies occupying almost the same space, deploying chemical weapons runs the risk of a disastrous backfire if, say, the wind shifts or an engine misfires. Tactically, when Iraq used chemical weapons against Iran, the weapons were used before an offensive, to weaken the resolve of Iranian fighters. And when Iraq used the weapons against the Kurds, they were dropped into northern regions where there was no Iraqi military presence.

“They have a limited utility,” said Gregory D. Koblentz, a terrorism expert for the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. “And they can mess up your own operations.”

Experts agreed that the greatest threat regarding Syria's nuclear weapons comes not from the Assad regime but from the Islamist radicals, including some with alleged links to al-Qaida, who are at the forefront of the rebel fighting force. The experts are urging U.S. officials to work closely with the rebels to ensure the security of chemical weapons depots in contested areas and allow Syrian soldiers to continue guarding them.

Leonard S. Spector, director of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Washington, and Egle Murauskaite, a research associate, made those and other suggestions in a grim report on Syria's chemical weapons for last month's issue of Arms Control Today. They added that, should the sites come under insurgent control, the rebels should be pressed to authorize inspections by international experts and should be reassured that the successful prevention of weapons falling into the wrong hands could be rewarded with foreign aid.

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